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Biotech / Medical : Biotech success, 2002 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Miljenko Zuanic who wrote (72)	5/22/2002 2:44:06 AM
From: Miljenko Zuanic	Respond to of 117

GSK has no time to spare! Wednesday May 22, 1:17 am Eastern Time Glaxo, U.S. Firm Nobex Agree to Develop Oral Diabetes Drug LONDON -- GlaxoSmithKline PLC is expected to announce that it has signed a $283 million agreement with a tiny U.S. company to develop an oral insulin drug, a possible alternative to the insulin injections many diabetics now use, Wednesday's Wall Street Journal reported. Diabetes affects 16 million people in the U.S. About one million of those people have Type 1 diabetes, requiring insulin injections to stay alive. For some -- especially children -- this is an intrusive and uncomfortable procedure. The oral insulin drug is being developed by Nobex Corp., a closely held company in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Under terms of the agreement, Glaxo will pay $283 million to Nobex over several years, including an upfront fee and milestone payments. In exchange, Glaxo gets world-wide rights to sell the drug. Scientists have long been stymied by the difficulty of creating an oral insulin pill, mainly because the powerful enzymes in the digestive system destroy much of the insulin before it can be absorbed and moved to the liver. Nobex has tried to get around this problem by chemically attaching certain chemical entities called polymers to insulin molecules, thereby protecting the insulin and letting more of it get absorbed in the intestines. So far, Nobex's drug has been tested only in small patient groups over short periods. It is years away from becoming a marketable product. But the company says that early results are encouraging. In one study involving 31 patients, the oral insulin was "as effective" in controlling post-meal blood-sugar levels of diabetic patients when compared with Lispro, a common injectable insulin made by Eli Lilly Corp., according to Nobex. The company plans to publicly disclose data from several such trials at next month's meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Francisco . Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter Gautam Naik contributed to this report.